HOWE ROOM: What’s a good night’s sleep for a premier cost? $7,100

House Speaker Gordie Gosse has been reminding MLAs this sitting to debate in a “nice, parliamentary way.” (ERIK WYNNE / Staff)

Premier Darrell Dexter’s rationale last week for flying first class on a trade mission to China in September rang a bit hollow with some reporters who wanted to speak with him the day he returned.

“It is simply the ability to be able to sleep. That is the major difference that you get in that class of service,” Dexter told the media after the Liberals questioned the $7,100 flight.

“You’re not going somewheres where you can take days to be able to be able to catch up. You get there and you go to work.”

Fair enough, but what about when you get back?

A colleague at The Chronicle Herald recalled there were multiple requests to speak with Dexter on Sept. 21, as the deal to save the paper mill in Point Tupper seemed to be falling apart.

The response from the his office was that he wasn’t in that day because he got home after midnight, after about 20 hours of travel.

Dexter did rise eventually, speaking to the Herald that evening about the then-failed deal. The mill deal was saved less than 24 hours later.

In a fall devoidof NHL hockey, the mining industry is tying Wayne Gretzky into its faceoff with the province over a fuel tax break.

Its association has labelled some hockey pucks it’s giving away with Bill 99 The Great One, to draw attention to Bill 99 — coincidentally, the number of hockey’s Great One — in the legislature.

The Tory bill would extend the tax break, an idea the Liberals support and the NDP government is considering.

The Dexter government doesn’t seem interested in calling opposition legislation “great” or otherwise.

The government hasn’t filled its daily scheduled hours for business for more than a week. On Friday, the House was scheduled to sit from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but adjourned at 11:37 a.m. About half of Thursday’s noon-6 p.m. hours were used.

Liberal House leader Michel Samson suggested the government could fill the time by calling some opposition legislation for debate.

Government House leader Frank Corbett said if Samson was worried about using time, the opposition could speak to government bills.

“We’ve got bills today where they can’t even muster a speakers list,” he said Friday. “If they can’t speak on our bills, they probably can’t even speak on their own.”

Opposition apathy over some of the government’s legislation is understandable, but the caucuses have to be careful it doesn’t lead to unintended consequences. There was at least one occasion this sitting when opposition benches were empty, leaving the possibility of the governing side getting unanimous consent for whatever motion it wanted.

Amid the raucousnessof the House, Speaker Gordie Gosse has been reminding MLAs this sitting to debate in a “nice, parliamentary way.”

It doesn’t always work.

Several MLAs got tagged last week for use of unparliamentary language, including Dexter for referring to Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil’s “ignorance,” and Tory Leader Jamie Baillie for asking about a bogeyman “intent on screwing the forests of Nova Scotia.”

But it’s not all cacophony and insults in the legislative chamber. Timberlea-Prospect MLA Bill Estabrooks entertained with a riff on how he’s prone to losing keys — “in the last 12 months, five times, five times!” — in commenting on the War Amps Key Tag Act.

And New Democrats set aside their jeers about the Liberals’ “inexperience” as the House unanimously congratulated Grit MLA Kelly Regan for her award from the Canadian Progress Club Halifax Cornwallis

McNeil’s congratulatory resolution wished her “many more years of exceptional contributions to public life” and the Dippers didn’t even try to add “just not as the Bedford-Birch Cove MLA.”